Day Four at Park City, Utah: as I mentioned previously, the weather has been unseasonably warm, I walked into an anti-fur demonstration on Main Street, and I'm now determined to replace my wifi-impaired laptop. Internet hotspots in the Park City condos -- tell me where, I'd like to know.
Sitting down to a lunch at a Burger King just off the main drag, I recall the first time I walked into the joint two years ago and observed the steady stream of Latino day laborers, townies and festival-goers lining up for fast food. In a sense, this is the real Park City, with no inflated prices, no presenses, and no worries. I now find myself making at least one pit stop at the Burger King on Park Avenue -- I come here to decompress and think without having to stress over where I have to be like, five minutes ago. Definitely a welcome respite.
Many of the feature-length works I see as part of the Sundance slate foreground the stories of remarkable people, placed into extraordinary and at time hazardous situations. A pair of works I was able to screen while helping out with the preparations for the 8th annual APA Filmmakers Experience Reception also distinguish themselves for referencing world events both historical and modern, but as with just about everything I've been watching, their success depends on how one reacts and identifies with the situations depicted.
For instance, take the emotional roller-coaster that was the back-to-back bill I took in -- Ngawang Cheophel's TIBET IN SONG and Cherien Dabis' AMREEKA. Both foreground stories of external and internal exiles in markedly different ways, and with varying degrees of success. In TIBET IN SONG, director Cheophel, a musicologist by profession, embarks on a mission to record traditional Tibetan folk music, an art form that is rapidly dying due to the introduction of recorded music by the Chinese Communist Party in the early 1950s, and by the PRC's insistence that lyrics that stressed Tibetan traditions and stories be replaced with praises to the wisdom of Communism and, specifically, mao Zedong. Those who continued to uphold the tradition of Tibetan folk music and arts ran the risk of immediate and lengthy imprisonment, a fate that befell Cheophel upon his return to Tibet in 2001. Since released after an intense five-year battle to win his freedom, Cheophel narrates his story by intercutting scenes that depict the damages that outside culture has wrought on Tibetan folk music and its practitioners. Clips of Tibetan singers crooning lyrics singing praises to Mao and collecctive struggle encroach upon traditional stories and fables; while in the modern-day streets of Llasa, the capital city, mix tapes and even contemporary strains of hip hop music relegate the practice of composing and singing traditional Tibetan music to a refugee community in northern India, where persecuted Tibetan folk artists flee. Foregrounding the history of Tibet's 20th century history through both mesmerizing archival footage and director Cheophel's restrained narration (the Dalai Llama is referenced, though he thankfully doesn't hog up any more screen time than absolutely needed), TIBET IN SONG moved me deeply, something that 9 a.m. press screenings fail to do for me much these days.
A completely different turn is provided by Muna Farah, a Palestinian bank examiner and single parent who is presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to emigrate from her Ramallah, West Bank suburb to Chicago in AMREEKA. As played by actress Nisreen Faour, Muna is indeed the archetypical bank beaurocrat: a bit plump, stern-looking in the face of impatient customers and hapless co-workers, and unfailingly devoted to her teenage son Fadi. Things change when her family is granted a U.S. green card. Reluctant to leave her home country, she is determined to provide Fadi a future that would be impossible for a Palestinian man with little hope to attend college. The turning point comes soon after, when at yet another Israeli checkpoint that mother and son are forced to endure, Fadi is subjected, at rifle-point and in front of his mother, to a strip search for explosive devices on his person. That's it, they're outta there. When next we see them, Muna and Fadi land in Chicago, where her relatives live in relative luxury and where Muna can enroll Fadi in a college prep school and set about building a new life, complete with a new job.
Okay, hold everything: did I not mention that the story takes place circa 2003, at about the same time that the U.S. invades Iraq and overthrows Saddam Hussein? I think you know what happens next: Muna's cousin's husband, a successful doctor, sees an exodus of patients who suddenly feel uncomfortable with an Arab physician; without an income to finance their quality of life, the family falls behind on mortgage payments; and husband and wife have a falling out over her free-spending ways, not to mention the two new additions to the family. Muna's savings are confiscated at immigration control, placing immediate pressures on her landing a job, and fast. No one is hiring, except for the most unlikely of places -- a White Castle Burger, where Muna is hired to flip burgers. Conscious of the humiliation of accepting work far beneath her station, Muna hides the details of her new job from the family until a series of events forces her secret out in the open.
I dunno -- I went into the screening halfway expecting an insightful glimpse into the experiences of a contemporary Arab woman that vaguely sounded like a work reminiscent of masters as Shohei Imamura or even Wayne Wang. I certainly didn't expect to get bludgeoned over the head with yet another assimilationist melodrama. Once Muna and Fadi arrived into the U.S., all their travails, from the money hidden on cookie tins seized by immigration; to the white punks who taunt Fadi at school; to even the benevolent white high school principal and bank officer point to a conclusion I saw coming a mile away. The packed audience I screened the film with cheered their approval well enough, but it seemed clear to me that while certainly universal, AMREEKA was a film produced for the audience in the back seats, as it were. In this economic environment, it certainly seems poised to be a feel-good movie to be championed in the same manner of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, another work that casts an eye on a misunderstood minority community, albeit one not set in the United States. But then, the trick would be for the film to get sold to a distributor. As I haven't engaged with anyone with any knowledge of word-of-mouth "buzz" around this or any other film this week, it's hard to say what the commercial prospects of AMREEKA would be. We'll just have to wait and see.
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